Vaughan was so alarmed at the discovery of this letter that he took refuge in France. To avoid arrest as an Englishman, he assumed the name of Jean Martin, and lived in retirement at Passy, his identity being known to only five or six persons. One of these was Bishop Grégoire, who states that the English Government supposed him to have gone to America, or would otherwise have outlawed him. Another was Robespierre, to whom he paid secret visits. A third was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who, lying ill at the Palais Royal, was not a little surprised by a call from Vaughan, his fellow student at Warrington and Cambridge. Vaughan told him that Jackson, the Irish conspirator, had been introduced to him in London, and that though quite ignorant of the plot, he had thought it safest to absent himself.[1] In June the Committee of Public Safety detected his incognito and arrested him, but after a month's detention at the Carmelite monastery he was banished. According to Garat he was mobbed in the street as one of Pitt's spies, and narrowly escaped immediate trial and execution; but even if his apprehension really took place in this way the danger could not have been so imminent as Garat represents.
Vaughan repaired to Geneva, and had no sooner
- ↑ Rowan does not give his visitor's name. His editor gives it as Bingham, but Vaughan was evidently the man, and Robespierre had probably sent him.
